Embracing the big and small changes of parenthood

THE PARENTS: Kathryn Council, 29, and Jared Council, 33, of Cherry Hill

THE CHILD: Wesley Theodore, born July 18, 2021

HIS NAME: They wanted a classic, timeless name, and they practiced saying it in different contexts — as if their son were being called to the stage as valedictorian, or in the voice of a teacher saying, “We love that, Wesley!”

Jared had a hole in his shoe.

Kathryn’s grandmother said that was a good sign.

“I took him to church with me one Sunday and said, ‘Grandma, look at him, he has a hole in his shoes,’ and she said, ‘That’s a good man; that shows he’s hardworking and he’ll go without to make sure others have what they need. You need to keep that man around.’ ”

By that point, Kathryn didn’t need convincing. Sure, she played hard to catch when they first met as cubicle-mates at the Evansville Courier & Press in Indiana; she was a summer intern with one year of college behind her, and he’d just graduated.

Both went to Hampton University, but they’d never met on campus.

“I kept telling him, ‘I don’t date people I work with.’ I wanted to be independent. I didn’t want to be tied down,” Kathryn recalls. But she was drawn by Jared’s writing, intrigued by his big-city pedigree and Philly accent.

“That was the summer we fell in love,” Jared recalls. “We were some of the few Black people in the newsroom, so we had that connection as well.” He knew they were on the same page — so to speak — when he brought Kathryn to his apartment and she began rifling through his collection of old National Geographic magazines, saying, “This is so cool!”

“It just felt like I’d known her all my life,” he says.

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They continued dating; the summer after Kathryn’s junior year, Jared took her to the 36th-floor Skyline Club, with a panoramic view of Indianapolis. She was ogling the twilit sky when he dropped to one knee and pulled out the ring. “Yes, yes, a million times yes,” she said.

“We were so in love, and broke,” Kathryn recalls. “We had this tiny apartment, but we were so happy to be together.” Two months after becoming engaged, a parking enforcement officer gave them their first wedding gift — an empty ticket envelope affixed to their windshield so they wouldn’t get an actual ticket while acquiring their marriage license inside the Norfolk courthouse.

They didn’t have money for a fancy wedding, or a large one. Instead, Kathryn recalls, “We woke up one Friday morning and said, ‘Let’s get married.’ ” It was the kind of spontaneous, joyful act that’s more typical of Kathryn than of Jared. “I’m calculated, pretty conservative, and she’s a free spirit. But it’s rubbed off on me,” he says. “If you want to do something, just go do it. Go live!”

That’s the spirit that prompted them to move from the Midwest to Union, N.J. — closer to the buzz of East Coast theater and journalism centers — and, later, to Cherry Hill.

Both wanted kids: Jared has 11 siblings, and two of his sisters each have seven children. Kathryn is a twin who has two other siblings as well. “I love having noise in the house,” she says. “I love being around children.”

They tried conceiving through most of 2020 — ”Is something wrong?” she wondered; “Why is it taking so long?” — until the November day when she took test after test, not believing that the word pregnant was real. On the ultrasound, they saw a pulsing dot. They called it “Nugget.”

“I knew: This is a game changer,” Jared says. “It was joy and a feeling of stepping into something different that you haven’t been in before.”

» READ MORE: In a different place, they make time for a third

They told family members at Thanksgiving. Jared said, “I got a promotion. I’m excited to announce that I’ve been promoted to … Dad.” Everyone applauded.

Kathryn recalls her pregnancy as a buoyant, hopeful stretch, free of complications or complaints. She prepared for labor with “supernatural childbirth” techniques — like hypno-birthing, she says, but with a spiritual perspective.

“I went into my pregnancy prayed-up. I understood that the pain had a purpose. I did a lot of mental prep.” At one point, just as Kathryn was about to push, her playlist cued up somber, meditative music. But her doula, Giovonna Clifton, switched the track to something more upbeat. Wesley emerged to the gospel cadence of “Oh Happy Day.”

Jared remembers a room full of strong women, an infant with a head of thick hair. “I was crying, but I couldn’t fully cry. I was out of breath. I finally get to meet this person I’ve been waiting my whole life for, like a pen pal in another country; you’ve been talking with them for so long, and they finally show up.”

For Kathryn, the breath-stealing moment came when Wesley gripped her finger while nursing. “This is my little person,” she remembers thinking. “We made this. This is a result of our love.”

Now, they toggle between thoughts of the future — that education fund, the stocks Jared wants to buy so Wesley will have investments when he’s older — and the gravitational tug of the present.

» READ MORE: Settling in as a family, ready to stay plugged in

“Being a mom has toughened me,” Kathryn says, giving her the boldness to question an OB about disparities in Black women’s maternal health outcomes, to seek a hospital where her family would be treated with respect.

“The world can be dangerous. I’m raising a Black son in America, and that is not necessarily the most forgiving and positive space. But I’m raising him to be powerful. I’m raising him to be loved.” Motherhood, including postpartum struggles with anxiety and “baby blues,” also changed her outlook on other women. “I look at every mom differently now: You, ma’am, are the real MVP!”

For Jared, the paradigm-jolt of parenthood continues. For weeks, he tried to made his son smile … and then one day, he made goofy sounds with the letter Z, and Wesley gummed a side-smile that bloomed into a full grin. “I lost it,” Jared says. “My heart couldn’t take it. It’s little stuff like that — it takes every concern, every issue and just minimizes it to a grain of sand. Because my kid is smiling.”